Chapter V: Book 3: of the document book for the Defendant Hess there are also a (1)

number of citations of foreign statesmen that refer to this military clause in the Versailles Treaty and in which it is stated that Germany fulfilled her obligations in the Versailles Treaty, but that the reciprocal obligations in it for the opposite side were not fulfilled.

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: Well, I am sorry. I did not remember any. I have read it through, and there may be some collateral matters dealing with that, but—and I do not think that I am doing Dr. Seidl’s great industry in collecting these matters an injustice in saying that if they do exist they are collateral and the main point of this is an attack on the political and economic clauses of the treaty. I hope that I have done him justice. I certainly intended to do so. That is the impression made on me.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal will adjourn.

[_The Tribunal recessed until 1400 hours._]

_Afternoon Session_

MARSHAL: If it please the Tribunal, may I report that the Defendant Streicher will be absent from this session of Court.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal rules that evidence as to the injustice of the Versailles Treaty or whether it was made under duress is inadmissible, and it therefore rejects Volume 3 of the documents on behalf of the Defendant Hess.

DR. SEIDL: Mr. President, Your Honors. Since Volume 3 of the document book for the Defendant Rudolf Hess is not admissible as documentary evidence, I am, so far as the submission of documents is concerned, at the end of my submission of evidence. Now, we are further concerned only with the affidavit of Ambassador Gaus, which I have already submitted, and I ask you not to decide on the admissibility of this document until I have had opportunity to present arguments on the relevance of it and of the secret treaty. But I should like to point out that with this affidavit only the facts and the contents of this secret treaty are to be proved; and therefore I shall read only excerpts from it, so that other events and the history prior to the treaty are not to be demonstrated by me.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Seidl, we understand that this affidavit of the witness Gaus is now being translated and is going to be submitted to the various prosecutors. They will then inform us of their position, and we shall be able to see whether it is admissible or not, and the Prosecution will likewise be able to tell us whether they want to have the Ambassador here for the purpose of cross-examining him.

DR. SEIDL: Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: So we must postpone that until we get the translations.

DR. SEIDL: I had then the further intention of calling the defendant himself as a witness. In view of his attitude as to the question of the competency of this Court, he has asked me, however, to dispense with this procedure. I therefore forego the testimony of the defendant as a witness and have no further evidence to put in at this point.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.

Then the Tribunal will now deal with the case against the Defendant Ribbentrop.

DR. HORN: Your Lordship, Your Honors, my client, Joachim von Ribbentrop, had instructed me to make the following statement for him at the beginning of the evidence:

“As Foreign Minister for the Reich, I had to carry through the
directions and orders of Adolf Hitler concerning foreign policy.
For the measures of foreign policy undertaken by me I accept
full responsibility.”

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Horn, I thought defendants’ counsel knew that the rule which we have laid down is that at this stage no speeches shall be made, but that the evidence should be called, the oral evidence should be called, and the documents should be briefly referred to and offered in evidence. Did you not understand that?

DR. HORN: I did not know, Mr. President, that one might not submit a statement on behalf of his client.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, the Tribunal has laid down on several occasions, I think, verbally and certainly once in writing, that no speeches can be made now, but that speeches can be made at the time laid down in the Charter. The present opportunity is for all evidence to be given and for documents to be offered in evidence, with such explanatory observations upon the documents as may be necessary.

DR. HORN: The former Foreign Minister for the Reich, Joachim von Ribbentrop, is, according to the general Indictment and according to the trial brief of the British Delegation and the verbally presented special charges, held responsible for all crimes cited in Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal.

Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, in the session of the International Military Tribunal of 8 January 1946, described the facts of the case against my client as follows:

Firstly, the using of his offices and of his personal influence and intimate connection with Hitler to facilitate the seizure of power through the NSDAP and the preparation of wars.

Secondly, the participation in the political planning, and preparation of the National Socialist Conspiracy for Wars of Aggression...

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Horn, are you again making a speech or what are you doing?

DR. HORN: No, Mr. President, I am just enumerating on one page how I plan to arrange my evidence, and I ask to be allowed to divide it in this way.

THE PRESIDENT: Very well.

DR. HORN: Secondly, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe adduced the participation in the political planning and preparation of the National Socialist conspirators for aggressive war and the wars in violation of international treaties. He accordingly bears the responsibility for the execution of the foreign policy planned by the political conspirators.

Thirdly, participation in and approval of Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity, especially crimes against persons and property in the occupied territories.

The Defendant Von Ribbentrop has declared himself not guilty of all crimes charged against him. To refute the charges made against him, I will begin now my presentation of evidence.

The honorable prosecutor at the beginning of his statements quoted from Exhibit Number USA-5, Document Number 2829-PS, and brought out that the Defendant Von Ribbentrop was an SS Obergruppenführer. The honorable prosecutor asserted that this rank was not an honorary one. In opposition to this, the defendant asserts that the rank of an SS Gruppenführer and later of Obergruppenführer, bestowed by Hitler, was bestowed upon him only on an honorary basis, because Hitler wished that the members of the Government should appear on official occasions in uniform, and the rank of an SS Gruppenführer appeared in keeping with the official position of the defendant. The defendant neither served in the SS nor led an SS unit. Neither did he have any adequate military training and preparation for this high military position.

To demonstrate this I will submit evidence from the defendant himself as a witness.

The Prosecution has asserted that Von Ribbentrop, after the taking over of power, for a short period of time was adviser of the Party on foreign political matters. This assertion is refuted by Document 2829-PS which is contained in the document book in the hands of the Tribunal. I will read Paragraph 3, where it says:

“Foreign Policy Collaborator to the Führer, 1933-1938.”

This is the first document of the Ribbentrop document book. According to it, in the years 1933 to 1938 Von Ribbentrop was only Hitler’s adviser on foreign political questions. With reference to Document D-472, Exhibit Number GB-130, the second document in the Document Book Ribbentrop, which concerns an excerpt from the International Biographical Archives, the honorable prosecutor claimed that the defendant even before 1932 worked for the NSDAP, after he had entered the Party service in 1930. The Prosecution cites Paragraph II, Lines 6-9, of this document, which says:

“Following up his connection with foreign countries, he
established new relations with England and France; having been
in the service of the NSDAP since 1930, he knew how to extend
them to political circles.”

The statement is not correct. The defendant was until 1932 not a member of any political party in Germany, particularly not of the NSDAP. As far as his political views were concerned, he leaned toward the Deutsche Volkspartei—that is the party of Stresemann.

In the year 1932 the defendant came to know Hitler personally. His views on domestic and foreign political matters brought him...

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Horn, I do not want to interrupt you unnecessarily, but I do not understand what you are doing now. You seem to me to be stating a part of the evidence which presumably the Defendant Von Ribbentrop will give, and, if so, when he gives it it will be cumulative to your statement. Also, you seem to be referring to documents which have been produced by the Prosecution and answering them yourself. Well, that is not what the Tribunal desires at this stage. It quite understands that at the appropriate time you will make whatever argument you think right with reference to the evidence which has been brought forward, on behalf of the Defendant Von Ribbentrop. But, as I have already said—I thought quite clearly—what the Tribunal wants done now is to hear all the evidence on behalf of Von Ribbentrop and to have offered in evidence the documents upon which you will rely, with any short explanatory statement as to the meaning of the documents. And if there is any part of a document which has been produced by the Prosecution but not cited by them which you think it necessary to refer to, as explanatory of the part of the document which has been used by them, then you are at liberty to put in, to offer in evidence that part of the document with any short explanatory words that you wish. But I do not understand what you are doing now except making a speech.

DR. HORN: Mr. President, I was using the opposing fact which I wish to present against the claims of the Prosecution, because according to my information and according to my documents, they do not correspond to the facts. As far as the establishment of Point 1 of what Mr. President has just said, I would like to state the following: The health of the Defendant Von Ribbentrop is quite poor at present. This morning the doctor told me that Ribbentrop is suffering from so-called vasomotor disturbances in his speech. I wanted to take a part of his evidence statement from my client by making a statement of it here and thus showing the position of the defendant to the Tribunal. I do not know whether the Defendant Von Ribbentrop, in view of his present state of health, that is, his impediment of speech, could make these explanations as briefly as I myself can. Then, when the defendant is in the box, he needs only to confirm these statements under oath.

THE PRESIDENT: If the Defendant Von Ribbentrop is too ill to give evidence today, then he must give evidence on some future occasion. If you have any oral witnesses to call other than the Defendant Von Ribbentrop, then they can give evidence today; and with reference to the documentary evidence, it is perfectly simple for you to offer those documents in evidence in the way that it was done by Dr. Stahmer, in the way that it was done by Dr. Seidl, and the way in which the Tribunal have explained over and over again.

DR. HORN: I had intended to submit documents first and not to call my witnesses until later. As far as Von Ribbentrop is concerned, I have learned that his condition has become constantly worse. I do not know therefore whether at the end of the presentation of evidence I will be in a position to summon the Defendant Von Ribbentrop; but I must be prepared for the possibility that I might not be able to call him. And otherwise I am concerned with only a very few very general points for rectification.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Horn, you cannot give evidence at any rate and if you cannot call Von Ribbentrop, then you must, if it is possible to do so, call some other witnesses who will give the evidence which he would have given. If, unfortunately, it is not possible to do so, then his case may suffer; but the Tribunal will give every possible facility for his being called at any stage. If he is in fact so ill, as you suggest, that he cannot give evidence, then his evidence may be put off until the end of the defendants’ case, subject of course to a proper medical certificate being produced.

DR. HORN: If the Court wants then later to hear the defendant, I will postpone the matter with the request that if I cannot hear him, that is, cannot hear him fully—for I emphasize again, there is a speech disturbance—then he can at least confirm the evidence as a witness.

THE PRESIDENT: You may call any of the witnesses; the Tribunal has not laid down that the defendant must be called first. You have applied for eight witnesses, I think, in addition to the defendant and you can call any of them or you can deal with your documents, but whichever you do, you must do it in the way which the Tribunal has ordered.

DR. HORN: Then, I will turn now to the occupation of the Rhineland.

On 27 February 1936, there was ratified between the French Republic and the Soviet Union a mutual-assistance pact, the content of which clearly violated the Locarno Treaty and the covenant of the League of Nations, and was solely directed against Germany. At the same time...

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Horn, you have just said that something or other is against international law. Now, that is not a reference to any document which you are offering in evidence, nor is it any comment upon the production of oral evidence. If you have a document to offer, kindly offer it and then make any necessary explanatory remarks.

DR. HORN: Then, I wanted next to refer to Document Number 1 in the Document Book Ribbentrop. We are concerned with a memorandum of the German Government to the signatory powers of the Locarno Pact, of 7 March 1936.

THE PRESIDENT: Which page is that?

DR. HORN: That is on Page 6 of the document book. In explanation I may add that this memorandum was submitted to the signatory powers, because between the French Government and the Republic of the Soviet Union a treaty of mutual assistance had been ratified and at the same time, the German Foreign Office received knowledge of a plan which the French General Staff had worked out and which arranged that the French Army was to advance along the line of the Main, so that North and South Germany in this way would be separated, and even to join hands with the Russian Army across Czechoslovakia.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Horn, for the formality of the record, it is necessary to offer each document in evidence and the document should be given a number. You have not yet offered any of these documents in evidence or given them any numbers, so far as I know.

DR. HORN: I gave this document the number, Ribbentrop Exhibit Number 1. The number is in the upper right hand corner of the document.

THE PRESIDENT: Very well.

DR. HORN: And I ask—perhaps I may say this in order to save time—I ask that all these documents quoted as Ribbentrop exhibit number be accepted in evidence.

THE PRESIDENT: Very well, and in the order in which you quote them?

DR. HORN: Yes, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: They will be numbered that way. Very well.

DR. HORN: As to the particulars just submitted on the reason for this memorandum being lodged, and as evidence of the fact just cited regarding the arrangement of the French General Staff, I will call Von Neurath as a witness. I will question him on this one point, when he is called into the box. In order to justify the German view, which is contained in the memorandum and which consists in the fact that the Locarno Pact and the League of Nations covenant were considered infringed upon, I would like to refer to Page 3 of the document and wish to quote the following—this is on Page 8 of the document book:

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Horn, was this document Exhibit Number Ribbentrop-1, one of the documents for which you applied and which you were allowed in the applications?

DR. HORN: Yes, Mr. President. This document is concerned with excerpts from the _Dokumente der Deutschen Politik_ (_Documents of German Politics_), Volume 4.

I want to stress that this collection of documents was granted to me at the same time as the two evidence books.

THE PRESIDENT: The Tribunal would like to see the original document.

DR. HORN: Mr. President, we are not in a position to present original documents, since the Foreign Office was confiscated by the victorious powers and with it a great part of the documents. Then I would have to make an application now that the signatory powers concerned produce these original documents, for we simply are not able to. We can only refer to document collections.

THE PRESIDENT: Where does the copy come from?

DR. HORN: This copy, Mr. President, is from the _Dokumente der Deutschen Politik_, Volume 4, as is shown in the document book which the President has before him. The document is found on Page 123 of this document collection.

I should like, Mr. President, to add an explanatory remark: If the Court is interested in seeing the original, I should have to have the collection, which is up in the document room now, brought down. It is in German, and I do not believe that it would be of any value to the Tribunal at this time. May I mention further...

THE PRESIDENT: You see, Dr. Horn, as a matter of formality and certainty, the Tribunal ought to have in its record every document which forms part of the record, whether it is an original or whether it is a copy; and whatever the document is that is offered in evidence, it ought to be handed in to the Tribunal and kept by the Tribunal. It ought to be put in evidence, offered in evidence, and handed to the General Secretary or his representative, and then the Tribunal has a full record of every document which is in evidence.

But we cannot have documents such as this, which is a mere copy of the original document which ought to be offered in evidence. If it is at the Information Center, then it is quite capable of being produced here.

DR. HORN: Mr. President, the Court decided that we are justified in copying documents and certifying to the authenticity in order that these documents may be submitted as evidence to the Tribunal. Therefore, we have compared every document with the original we had on hand, or with the printed copy of the document and at the end of the document we attested the authenticity of the copy. This document, certified with my own signature, is in the hands of the Tribunal, I believe in five copies.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Horn—Yes, Mr. Dodd.

MR. DODD: We thought that we might be helpful. We say that we are willing to accept this quotation from the volume referred to, and I do think that we did put in some documents ourselves and asked the Court’s indulgence at the time in something of the same fashion.

I think the Court, if I may suggest respectfully, might take this document on that same basis.

I have conferred only with Sir David, but I feel quite sure that our French and Russian colleagues will agree as well.

THE PRESIDENT: I think, Mr. Dodd, the point is—and, of course, it is probably only a formal point—that the only document which is offered in evidence or put in evidence is a copy which does not contain Dr. Horn’s signature and therefore there is nothing to show that it is in fact a true copy. Of course, if we had had Dr. Horn’s signature, we would be prepared to accept that it was a true copy of the original. What we have before us is a mere mimeograph, I suppose, of some document which has not been produced to us.

MR. DODD: Very well, Your Honor. I have not had an opportunity to examine it carefully. We did not get these documents, by the way, until pretty late last night. We have not had the usual period of time to examine it, but in any event, I have suggested it might go in, and if Dr. Horn would verify it, as suggested by the President, and later furnish the original copy, it might be all right.

THE PRESIDENT: That would be all right, certainly.

Dr. Horn, you understand what I mean. If you will produce to us at some future date the actual document which you signed yourself, to show that it was a true copy, that will be quite satisfactory.

DR. HORN: Mr. President, in the entire document book there is no document which I have not signed and given in five copies to be translated. Of course, I cannot also sign all the translations. This document which is contained in the document book submitted to the President has my signature in the German text.

THE PRESIDENT: You mean that you have handed your documents in to be translated, in German, with your signature at the bottom, saying it is a true extract, and you do not know where those documents are because they have gone into the Translation Division? That is right, is it not?

DR. HORN: Only partially, Mr. President. I know that I handed in these documents, to the proper office, in German, and with my signature. Then that office kept them and had them translated. From the moment I handed them in I naturally have had no further control of what happened.

I may also point out that the document books which we used were available only in a single copy and must be used by all attorneys, even now, for their future work. Because of that, I cannot produce the original for the Tribunal since it is not my property. That can be done in agreement only with the person in charge of the document section, Lieutenant Commander Schrader.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Horn, if, in the future, you and the other defendants’ counsel could get your document books ready in sufficient time, you could perhaps then make the arrangement that you hand in the document book, when you are offering it in evidence, and then it would be capable of being handed to the officer of the Court.

DR. HORN: Mr. President, I do not believe that that possibility exists at all, for these _Dokumente der Deutschen Politik_—just to use this example—are available only in one copy for the use of all Defense Counsel attorneys; I cannot take these books away, if they wish to continue work with them, in order to submit them to the Tribunal as evidence. I would not receive them. I receive these books only to use them, and make excerpts from them, and then I have to return them.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, but you are putting in evidence now a certain extract from the book, and all the Tribunal wants is that that extract be certified, either by you or by some other person who can be trusted, as a correct extract from the book, and that that document, so signed, can be produced. It may be difficult to produce it at the moment because you have handed it in to some official or to somebody in the Translation Division and therefore you cannot produce it, but it could be arranged that it should be produced in the future. I do not mean this particular one, but in the future other defendants’ counsel can produce their documents certified by themselves or by some other person of authority.

DR. HORN: That has already been done, Mr. President. Five document books of the same type, signed by me, were handed to the Tribunal.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Well, the rule of the Tribunal happens to be that they should be handed in, in this Court, at the time that they are being used, as well as their being handed in to somebody for the purpose of translation. That is the rule.

But now perhaps we had better get on as we are taking up too much time over this.

DR. HORN: I have just heard that the German documents which I signed are being procured from the Secretariat General, so I will be able to submit them to the Tribunal with signature, in the German.

THE PRESIDENT: Very well.

DR. HORN: I should like to continue and explain the afore-mentioned opinion of the legal consequences of the Pact made between France and Russia in 1936, and I refer to Page 3, that is, Page 8 of the document book. I quote:

“Consequently, the only question is whether France, in accepting
these treaty obligations, has kept within those limits which, in
her relation to Germany have been laid on her by the Rhine Pact.

“This, however, the German Government must deny.

“The Rhine Pact was supposed to achieve the goal of securing
peace in Western Europe by having Germany on the one hand, and
France and Belgium on the other, renounce for all time employing
military force in their relations to each other. If, by the
conclusion of the pact, certain reservations to this
renunciation of war, going beyond the right of self-defense,
were permitted, the political reason for this was, as is
generally known, solely the fact that France had already taken
on certain alliance obligations towards Poland and
Czechoslovakia which she did not want to sacrifice to the idea
of absolute peace security in the West. Germany at that time
accepted in good faith these reservations to the renunciation of
war. She did not object to the treaties with Poland and
Czechoslovakia, placed on the table at Locarno by the
representative of France, only because of the self-understood
supposition that these treaties adapted themselves to the
structure of the Rhine Pact and did not contain any provisions
on the application of Article 16 of the Covenant of the League
of Nations, such as are provided for in the new French-Soviet
agreements. This was true also of the contents of these special
agreements, which came to the knowledge of the German Government
at that time. The exceptions permitted in the Rhine Pact did, it
is true, not expressly refer to Poland and Czechoslovakia, but
were formulated generally. But it was the sense of all
negotiations about this matter to find a compromise between the
German-French renunciation of war and the desire of France to
maintain her already existent pact obligations. If, therefore,
France now takes advantage of the abstract formulation of war
possibilities allowed for in the Rhine Treaty in order to
conclude a new pact against Germany with a highly armed state,
if thus in such a decisive manner she limits the scope of the
renunciation of war mutually agreed upon with Germany, and if,
as set forth above, she does not even observe the stipulated
formal juridical limits, then she has created thereby a
completely new situation and has destroyed the political system
of the Rhine Pact both in theory and literally.”

I will omit the next paragraph and will quote from Page 9 of the document book as follows:

“The German Government have always emphasized during the
negotiations of the last years that they would maintain and
carry out all obligations of the Rhine Pact as long as the other
partners to the Pact also were willing on their part to adhere
to this Pact. This natural supposition cannot any longer be
regarded as fulfilled by France. In violation of the Rhine Pact,
France has replied to the friendly offers and peaceful
assurances, made again and again by Germany, with a military
alliance with the Soviet Union, directed exclusively against
Germany. Therefore the Rhine Pact of Locarno has lost its inner
meaning and has ceased to exist in any practical sense. For that
reason Germany also on her side does not consider herself bound
any longer by this pact which has become void.”

In consideration of the Franco-Russian pact and the intentions of the French General Staff, Hitler had the Defendant Von Ribbentrop come to him in order to question him about the presumable attitude of England to a possible German reoccupation...

THE PRESIDENT: You are reading from the document, are you not, Dr. Horn? You begin to tell us something about Hitler.

DR. HORN: Yes, I interrupted at the phrase “as bound by this pact which has become void,” in order to bring in the role of Ribbentrop briefly. On the basis of this pact and of the intentions of the French General Staff, Hitler then had the Defendant Von Ribbentrop...

THE PRESIDENT: We shall hear that from Von Ribbentrop, shall we not?

DR. HORN: Mr. President, we are permitted to add a few connecting words to the documents. I can now...

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Colonel Pokrovsky.

COL. POKROVSKY: As far as I can understand, the Tribunal has already explained to Ribbentrop’s Defense Counsel, Dr. Horn, that the Defense is now submitting a document. Although Dr. Horn does not consider it necessary to state when he deviates from the document and when he quotes from it, I have had the opportunity of noting that in the document he has just quoted, numbered Ribbentrop-1, there is a complete absence of any reference to the plans of the French General Staff. Among the documents in the document book submitted by Ribbentrop’s Defense Counsel I could not find any copies of the plans of the French General Staff. It is therefore quite incomprehensible to me how Dr. Horn happens to be informed about the plans of the French General Staff, and on what grounds he refers to these plans while presenting evidence, in Ribbentrop’s case, since they appear to be completely absent among the documents to which he refers.

DR. HORN: Mr. President...

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Horn, what you appeared to the Tribunal to be doing then was not anything explanatory of the document, but telling us what Hitler did, and what the Defendant Ribbentrop did, in consequence of what Hitler did. That is not in evidence. You cannot tell us what is not in evidence. You can only give us explanatory remarks to make the document itself intelligible.

DR. HORN: Mr. President, the Defendant Von Ribbentrop is accused on account of the conduct of the entire foreign policy. The Prosecution have presented the foreign political activity as they see it, and we have been permitted, not to give a speech, but, in connection with the documents submitted, to present our opposing view, as the Defense see it. In order to do that, I must refer to certain facts, documents and quotations. I can never give a complete picture if I may just submit a document without giving a large frame to this matter, a certain development in the entire policy.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, Dr. Horn, the Tribunal is not expecting you to give a complete picture at this stage. All you are doing at the present moment is introducing the evidence. You are going to give the complete picture when you make your final speech. It is intelligible, this document. It is a document which is well known; it is perfectly intelligible without telling us what Hitler or what the Defendant Ribbentrop did.

DR. HORN: Regarding these questions raised by the Russian Prosecutor, I have already asked for the Defendant Von Neurath as a witness. I can interrogate him on this point only after the Defendant Von Neurath is in the witness box. But I can still refer now to these facts that are counterevidence.

THE PRESIDENT: But, you see, that would be his function. If you are going to tell us what you think the Defendant Von Neurath is going to say in answer to questions which you put to him, that would be making an opening statement. Well, that has not been provided for by the Charter. We must wait until you call Von Neurath or until you question Von Neurath.

DR. HORN: Then I will read from this document just mentioned, Ribbentrop Exhibit Number 1, on Page 10 of the document book:

“The German Government are now forced to face the new situation
created by this alliance, a situation which is made more
critical by the fact that the Franco-Soviet pact has found its
complement in a pact of alliance of exactly parallel nature
between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. In the interest of
the elementary right of a nation to safeguard its borders and to
guarantee its defensive capacities, the German Government have
therefore re-established the full and unrestricted sovereignty
of the Reich in the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland,
effective today.”

I ask the Tribunal to accept the entire document as evidence. Through this step of the German Government certain articles of the Treaty of Versailles which were concerned with the demilitarization of the Rhineland zone had become obsolete. Since this morning, by decision of the Court, the taking of a position on the Versailles Treaty is not permitted, I will omit the corresponding material from the document book of the Defendant Von Ribbentrop, and turn now to the document Ribbentrop Exhibit Number 8, which is on Page 21 of the document book.

May I put another question first, Mr. President?

THE PRESIDENT: Certainly.

DR. HORN: Is it permitted to submit the official documents on the Treaty of Versailles that were exchanged between governments before the conclusion of the treaty? These are purely government documents and not any arguments on the treaty itself. May these documents be submitted after the decision of the Tribunal today?

THE PRESIDENT: Which are they, the one on Page 21?

DR. HORN: This is in regard to the Ribbentrop Exhibit Number 3.

THE PRESIDENT: Where is that?

DR. HORN: It is on Page 14 of the document book.

THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Horn, the Tribunal would like to know what issue in this Trial this document is relevant to.

DR. HORN: I wanted to explain by it the German opinion of the Treaty of Versailles. Ribbentrop Exhibit Number 2 is the note of Germany to the United States that contains the offer for an armistice and conclusion of peace. And I wanted further to show in the next note again that this offer was one based on the Wilsonian Fourteen Points. Further, with Ribbentrop Exhibit Number 4, I wanted to submit evidence that the peace and the armistice were to be concluded on the basis of the Fourteen Points with two exceptions. I also wanted to show through Ribbentrop Exhibit...

SIR DAVID MAXWELL-FYFE: My Lord, I tried not to interrupt, but really this is the issue that the Tribunal ruled on a fortnight ago when the Defendant Göring, I think, applied for documents on exactly this issue; and that also, as I understand, the Tribunal ruled on again this morning. The issue is perfectly clear; the only issue to which this can be directed is whether the Treaty of Versailles was in accordance with the Fourteen Points and if not, was therefore an unjust treaty which comes directly within the Tribunal’s ruling of an hour ago.

DR. HORN: May I add something more?

As far as I and my colleagues have understood the ruling of the Tribunal today, the only prohibition is against making before this Tribunal statements on the injustice of the treaty and on the fact that it purportedly was concluded under duress. We have not understood the decision in any other way.

THE PRESIDENT: That was why I asked you to what issue this was relevant, and you said that it was relevant to showing what the German opinion on the treaty was. Well, these are documents of the period before the treaty was made, and they seem to be only relevant upon the question of whether or not the treaty was a just treaty or not a just treaty.

DR. HORN: I personally did not want to demonstrate through this document either that it was a just or an unjust peace, but only that it was a treaty which had many legal inadequacies, since the main treaty was not in line with the agreements of the preliminary treaty.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, if the main treaty was not in accordance with the preliminary treaty then the main treaty would, according to that argument be an unfair treaty. That is the very point upon which the Tribunal has ruled.

DR. HORN: For that reason, Mr. President, I have just omitted these documents also and said that I will not refer to them in view of this ruling. I will now turn to Document Number 8.

THE PRESIDENT: As you are going through a lot of documents we might break off for 10 minutes.

[_A recess was taken._]

MR. DODD: I do not want to take much of the Tribunal’s time, but in view of the statement of Dr. Horn concerning the condition of the Defendant Von Ribbentrop, I think it is required that we inform the Tribunal of the situation as we understand it, which is something quite different from the understanding of Dr. Horn.

I have talked with Colonel Andrus and with one of the Army doctors in attendance. Colonel Andrus has talked with both of them, and our understanding is that Ribbentrop is not ill and is able to take the witness stand; that he is nervous, and appears to be frightened, but he is not disabled in any sense and is capable of testifying.

DR. HORN: I come now to Page 21 of the document book, and ask the Court to take judicial notice of the document appearing under Ribbentrop Exhibit Number 8. It is a copy, again from the _Dokumente der Deutschen Politik_, Volume 4, which I turned over, signed, to the Court. It is the speech of Ambassador Von Ribbentrop at the 91st session of the League of Nations Council in London, regarding the Soviet Pact, the Locarno Pact and the German Peace Plan. The speech was delivered on 19 March 1936. I refer to Page 3 of the speech and begin my quotation with Number 5. I quote:

“According to this alliance, France and Russia appoint
themselves judges on their own affairs by independently
determining the aggressor, if occasion arises without a
resolution or a recommendation of the League of Nations, and
thereby are able to go to war against Germany according to their
own judgment.

“This strict obligation of the two countries is clearly and
unequivocally evident from Paragraph 1 of the signatory protocol
to the Treaty of Alliance. That means: In a given case France
can decide, on her own judgment, whether Germany or Soviet
Russia is the aggressor. She merely reserves the right not to be
exposed, on account of military action based on such an
individual decision, to sanctions on the part of the powers
guaranteeing the Rhine Pact, namely, England and Italy.

“From the point of view of law and realistic politics, this
reservation is meaningless.

“In terms of law: How will France be able to foresee, when
determining the aggressor herself, what attitude the guarantors
of the Locarno Pact will afterwards assume towards her one-sided
definition? The answer to the question of whether France would
have to fear sanctions in such a case depends in practice not
only on the faithful adherence to the pact by the
guarantors—about which the German Government do not wish to
raise doubts in any way—but also on the most various
prerequisites of a purely factual nature, the probability or
improbability of which is not to be perceived in advance. In
addition, however, the evaluation of the relationship between
the new Treaty of Alliance and the Rhine Pact cannot be made
dependent on the treaty relationship between France and Germany
on the one hand and the Guaranteeing Powers on the other, but
only on the direct treaty relationship between France and
Germany themselves. Otherwise one would have to expect Germany
to tolerate silently every possible violation of the Rhine Pact
by France, in confidence that the guarantors would have to
provide for her security. That certainly is not the intention of
the Rhine Pact.

“In terms of realistic politics: When a country is attacked by
such a superior military coalition as a consequence of a
decision, incorrect because taken in advance in one of the
party’s own interests, it is an empty consolation to obtain its
right in subsequent sanctions against the aggressors condemned
by the League of Nations Council. For what sanctions could
actually hit such a gigantic coalition reaching from East Asia
to the Channel? These two countries are such powerful and
important members and especially militarily strong factors of
the League of Nations that according to all practical
considerations, sanctions would be unthinkable from the outset.

“Therefore this second reservation dealing with the
consideration of probable sanctions is of no consequence at all
from a realistic political point of view.

“I now ask the members of the Council to bear in mind not only
the legal and practical political scope of this obligation of
France’s to act independently, but to ask yourselves above all
whether the opinion can be advocated that the German Government
of that time, which signed the Locarno Pact, would ever have
taken upon themselves the obligations of this Pact, had it
contained such one-sided stipulations as have now later
developed.”

I now go to Page 26 of the document book, and the same document, and to clarify the German point of view, I add the following. I quote:

“But the Franco-Soviet Russian alliance means, beyond that—in
the German Government’s view of history—a complete elimination
of the hitherto existing European balance and consequently of
the fundamental political and legal conditions under which the
Locarno Pact was concluded at that time.”

With this, Germany had expressed the legal basis of her attitude toward the Locarno Pact and the Versailles stipulations regarding the demilitarization of the Rhineland. In order to prove her will to disarm, there is in the same document on Page 7, that is, Page 27 of the document book, an exhaustive and detailed disarmament proposal.

I ask the Tribunal to accept in evidence the document just cited, so that I may later refer to it.

With this exposition I conclude my presentation on Germany’s reasons for reoccupying the Rhineland. Regarding the role of the Defendant Von Ribbentrop in the occupation of the Rhineland, I shall enter upon that when I call the Defendant to the witness stand.

After the occupation of the Rhineland, the Defendant Von Ribbentrop returned to London, where he was then ambassador. On 4 February 1938 he was appointed Foreign Minister, and from that time on, conducted the foreign policy along the lines laid down by Hitler. In proof of this statement I refer to Ribbentrop Exhibit Number 10, to be found in the document book. This is a very short document that I submit to the Tribunal for judicial notice. It is an excerpt from the speech of the Führer before the German Reichstag in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin on 19 July 1940. I quote:

“I cannot conclude this appraisal without finally thanking the
man who for years has carried out my foreign political
directions in loyal, tireless, self-sacrificing devotion.

“The name of Party member Von Ribbentrop will be linked for all
time with the political rise of the German Nation as that of the
Reich Foreign Minister.”

I submit this quotation to the Tribunal to show according to what principles the Defendant Von Ribbentrop had to conduct the foreign policy.

I should like now to ask the Tribunal to hear the witness State Secretary Von Steengracht.

[_The witness Von Steengracht took the stand._]

THE PRESIDENT: Will you state your name, please?

ADOLF FREIHERR STEENGRACHT VON MOYLAND (Witness): Adolf von Steengracht.

THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me: “I swear by God—the Almighty and Omniscient—that I will speak the pure truth—and will withhold and add nothing.”

[_The witness repeated the oath in German._]

THE PRESIDENT: You may sit down if you wish.

DR. HORN: What was your last position in the Foreign Office?

VON STEENGRACHT: From May 1943 I was State Secretary of the Foreign Office.

DR. HORN: What were your activities?

VON STEENGRACHT: In order to present my activities in a comprehensible way, I must make the following prefatory remarks:

From the beginning of the war, the Foreign Minister had his office in the neighborhood of Hitler’s headquarters; that is to say in most instances several hundred kilometers distant from Berlin. There he carried on business with a restricted staff. The Foreign Office in Berlin had duties of a routine and administrative nature. But above all, its duty was also the execution of the regular intercourse with foreign diplomats.

Within the limits of this field of duties, I bore the responsibility, as State Secretary, from May 1943. The molding of foreign political opinion, the decisions and instructions in foreign policy, on the other hand, originated from headquarters, mostly without any participation, sometimes also without any subsequent information to the Foreign Office.

DR. HORN: Who determined the basic lines of the foreign policy?

VON STEENGRACHT: The foreign policy, not only on its basic lines, but also usually down to the most minute details, was determined by Hitler himself. Ribbentrop frequently stated that the Führer needed no Foreign Minister, he simply wanted a foreign political secretary. Ribbentrop, in my opinion, would have been satisfied with such a position because then at least, backed by Hitler’s authority, he could have eliminated partly the destructive and indirect foreign political influences and their sway on Hitler. Perhaps he might then have had a chance of influencing Hitler’s speeches, which the latter was accustomed to formulate without Ribbentrop, even in the foreign political field.

DR. HORN: Were there other offices or personalities, in addition to the Foreign Office, that concerned themselves with foreign policy?

VON STEENGRACHT: Yes, there was practically no office in the Party or its organizations that, after 1933, had no foreign political ambitions. Every one of these offices had a sort of foreign bureau through which it took up connections with foreign countries in the attempt to gain its own foreign political channels.

I should judge the number of these to be approximately thirty. For example, the Hitler Jugend, the SA, the German Labor Front, the SS, the Rosenberg office with its Foreign Political office, the Propaganda Ministry, the office Waldeck, the Ribbentrop office, the Nordic Society; further, the VDA, the German Academy, the Reich Railways (Reichsbahn) and others. Besides these offices, the immediate entourage of Hitler and personalities like Himmler, Goebbels, and Bormann had an influence in the shaping of foreign policy. Göring, too, as I see it, had perhaps a certain influence, but only until 1938—at any rate, in matters of foreign politics, scarcely later than that.

DR. HORN: Did Von Ribbentrop make efforts to prevent such influences or to exclude them?

VON STEENGRACHT: From my own observation, I can give only the following judgment: Almost every one of those persons, who had never before lived in foreign countries and who, as an occasional traveling salesman for the Third Reich, in peacetime, or after the occupation of a foreign country, had eaten well in the capital of this or that foreign country, considered himself an unrivaled expert on this country. They all had a predilection for bringing their enlightenment and discernment to Hitler. Unfortunately the further they were removed from actual conditions, the more they were in contradiction to the political requirements and necessities, and especially, unfortunately, the more so-called strength was shown and the more they stood in contradiction to the elementary feelings of humanity, the more they pleased Hitler. For Hitler regarded such statements and representations as sound judgment, and they had sometimes an irreparable effect, and formed in Hitler’s mind, together with his so-called intuition, the start of some fundamental idea. To the possible objection that it should have been easy for an expert to criticize such an opinion or view, I should like to point out the following: As long as the future German Ambassador in Paris was still a teacher of painting, Hitler read his reports with interest; but when he became the official representative of the Reich, his reports were mostly thrown unread into the wastepaper basket. Himmler’s reports, the slanted opinions of Goebbels, and Bormann’s influence played, on the other hand, a decisive role, as did reports from agents which could not be checked and which carried more weight than the opinions of experts on the countries.

DR. HORN: Was the Foreign Office responsible for relations with all foreign countries?

VON STEENGRACHT: I should like to remark further here that I have not yet answered the second part of your question, namely, regarding the elimination of this influence.

With Hitler’s methods of work, these so-called counterinfluences simply could not be eliminated. Against this “organized disorganization” Ribbentrop waged an unmitigating, bitter war, and that against almost all German offices. I should like to state further that at least 60 percent of his time was devoted to these things alone.

DR. HORN: Was the Foreign Office responsible for the relations with all foreign countries?

VON STEENGRACHT: In peacetime, yes.

DR. HORN: Did the position of the Foreign Office change with the outbreak of war?

VON STEENGRACHT: Yes. In point of fact, the Foreign Office lost its competency toward the country concerned at the moment when the German bayonet crossed the border. The exclusive right to maintain direct relations with foreign governments was eliminated in all occupied territories; in most instances even the right to have a representative of the Foreign Office whose post was for observation only and without competency. This is particularly true for the Eastern Territories and for Norway.

Where Ribbentrop made the effort to maintain, in spite of the occupation, a certain degree of independence of a country, as, for example, in Norway, this activity of our diplomats was termed weak, traitorous, stupid, and those responsible had to stop their work at once, on Hitler’s orders, and disappeared from the Foreign Office.

In general the changed position of the Foreign Office during the war is best characterized by Hitler’s statement: “The Foreign Office shall, as far as possible, disappear from the picture until the end of the war.” Hitler wanted to limit the Foreign Office to about 20 to 40 people, and it was even partially forbidden to form or to maintain any connection with the Foreign Office.

The Foreign Office, as such, and its officials were detested by Hitler. He considered them objective jurists, defeatists, and cosmopolitans, to whom a matter can be given only if it is not to be carried out.

DR. HORN: Was there any foreign policy, in a traditional sense, in Germany?

VON STEENGRACHT: No; at least, I never noticed anything of it, for Hitler had in effect made the statement: “Diplomacy is defrauding the people. Treaties are childish; they are respected only as long as they seem useful to the respective partners.” That was Hitler’s opinion of all diplomats in the world.

DR. HORN: Did the Foreign Office have any influence in the Eastern territories and the territories that were under civilian administration?

VON STEENGRACHT: T have already touched on this question. I have already said that in the territories in which there was a military government or a civilian administration, a representative of the Foreign Office—if he was tolerated at all—was tolerated only as an observation post, at any rate had no functions; that was the rule.

I think I would be going too far if I went through the condition in every country. The situations varied.

DR. HORN: Do you consider Von Ribbentrop a typical National Socialist or not?

VON STEENGRACHT: Ribbentrop was, in his whole attitude, no typical exponent of National Socialism. He knew extraordinarily little of the dogma and doctrines of National Socialism. He felt himself only personally bound to Hitler, whom he followed with soldierly obedience, and he stood under a certain hypnotic dependence on Hitler. However, I cannot characterize him as a typical exponent of National Socialism.

DR. HORN: Was Hitler a man who was accessible to suggestions and objections?